


Rise of the Necroprancer

by StarlightSystem



Series: Transcendence AU [6]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Ficlet, Gen, Silly, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25211836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightSystem/pseuds/StarlightSystem
Summary: It's a classic story: girl named Mabel meets horse, girl falls in love with horse, horse dies for some reason, girl begs her demon brother to raise horse from the dead.Dipper isn't sure why he's surprised anymore.
Series: Transcendence AU [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1372192
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	Rise of the Necroprancer

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the [Transcendence AU](https://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/)!

It began like one of those manic pixie horse girl straight-to-VHS summer movies that Dipper always saw in the bargain bin at Cubebuster when he was a kid.

“DIPPERRRRRR!” Mabel hollered, loudly enough to shake fruit from nearby trees. “Look! It’s a _horse_! Oh my STARS and it has flowers in its mane! How did you do that, baby? Sweetheart? Muffin... pie? Oh my fire and brimstone I’m going to take you home and _love you forever_!”

“I don’t know if Grunkle Stan is gonna like that,” was all that Dipper could think to reply, but he couldn’t even be sure Mabel heard him because she was already on the horse, hugging it as best she could, rubbing her face in its mane and getting bits of dirt and flower stems in her ears. He crossed his arms and pouted. “Seriously, Mabes, if Stan won’t let me keep my Nightmares in the Shack, there’s no way -”

He was cut off by the sight of the horse galloping full steam at him. He yelped and started running away, entirely forgetting that he could teleport at will and furthermore that he was incorporeal and thus the horse would just go through him. It caught up to him in no time and a hand fixed itself around his wrist, swinging him up and around so he was sitting astride the horse. He yelped again and instinctively wrapped his arms around Mabel’s middle so he wouldn’t fall off. Mabel, for her part, was sitting bolt upright with stars in her eyes, confident like she’d done this a million times before instead of zero times. To her credit, she actually did a pretty good job of directing her steed back to the Mystery Shack, apart from almost falling into the Bottomless Pit twice.

As it turned out, Grunkle Stan did not actually mind having a horse around the house. “Listen, kid,” he said to the indignant look on Dipper’s face, “you keep saying you don’t want to carry my lockpicking tools across town with me every day. Now the horse has got that covered. Plus, Mabel here’s getting pretty good at riding, and I was thinking we could take a trip down to the tracks one of these days...”

The horse chose that moment to take a bite out of Dipper’s top hat. “Yeah, okay, but does it actually have to be _in the house_ with us?” he yelled.

Mabel and Stan both laughed like they were sitcom characters, and things were generally alright for a while.

Then, it seemed the writers got sick of making a fluffy horse girl movie, and it morphed into something different. Something a little darker. Something a little more like a horror film.

“Nooooo!” Mabel cried, beating her fists against a bizarre horse-shaped coffin. “How could this have happened? We were just starting our lives together! There were so many more TV remotes for you to eat! You were going to marry into Waddles’s and Gompers’s polycule next week! And now you’re gone? No!”

Dipper floated over, tried to settle on a facial expression more comforting than “exasperation that this was happening at all”, and rested a hand on Mabel’s shoulder. “Honestly, I’m surprised this is the first time someone’s died from drinking Mabel Juice.”

Mabel’s head shot up and burned a furious bloodshot glare into his skull.

“Nope! Nope, okay, too soon, alright,” he said, throwing his hands up and floating back a foot.

“Oh, Gallops.” Grunkle Stan stepped into the room, holding his fez to his chest and wearing a solemn expression. It sounded suspiciously like he was whimpering. “Some people might say it’s wrong for a man to love a horse that his niece found in a government-owned park.”

“They’re wrong!” Mabel wailed.

“Easy, Mabel!” Stan stepped up to the casket, bit his lip, and looked away. “Gallops, I hope you’re winning derbies up in horse heaven.”

“Horses don’t go to heaven,” Dipper grumbled.

Stan and Mabel’s jaws dropped, frightening Dipper into stumbling partway through a wall.

“It’s not like that! Heaven doesn’t even exist, other than the space where souls go between reincarnations,” he babbled. “Horses don’t have souls though. There’s nothing there to _go_ to heaven; nothing gets lost when it dies. You could literally cast Animate Dead on it and it’d be good as new.”

He smiled, pleased that his family was paying so much attention to his fun facts and universal truths. It wasn’t that they usually ignored him when he spoke or anything, because they _were_ often happy to listen to him ramble about stuff that interested him. But right now seemed a bit different; the looks on their faces were maybe more manic than usual -- a departure from the misery the horse’s death had caused -- which could’ve been a testament to just how interesting his fun facts were, or it could mean...

“Oh no,” he breathed. “No no no no. I won’t do it!”

“Pleaaaaaaaaaaaase!” Mabel whined, running at him just as he started to back through the wall into the next room. “Dipper! Please resurrect Gallops! I know you can do it!”

“No! Mabel, stop it!” He backed through another wall and squeaked when he found himself face-to-face with Stan. “Aaa! How did you get here so fast?”

“Kid, listen to your sister,” Stan said, still clutching his fez to his chest in solemnity. His intentions were belied, however, by the large thought bubble only Dipper could see above Stan’s head which showed the man bathing with Gallops in a swimming pool filled with gold coins. “She’s heartbroken. If only someone could bring her horse back to life so she can ride it at the next derby.”

“Stan, quit daydreaming, seriously I’m getting crushed!” the demon yelled as Stan’s thought bubble got bigger and bigger and he had to fend it off with flailing limbs. “And I said no!”

“Pleaaaaaaase?” Mabel, out of nowhere, was hanging onto him like a backpack. “Please Dipper, you’ll be the best brother in the world if you bring Gallops back!”

He pouted. “I’m not already the best brother in the world?”

“Yes, you are, but you’ll be even better and I’d be like oh wow thanks Dipper you’re the BEST best bro-bro in the world, and I’ll owe you so much, I’ll let you possess me for the next guide to the unexplained movie thingy you make, I promise!”

Mabel put on the biggest puppy dog eyes Dipper had ever seen in his life, and he sighed. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

Covering his ears to protect himself from their loud screams of excitement, he proceeded to float back through the walls to the room the coffin was in. He heard the clamoring footsteps of his family jumping through doors to get to watch him in the act, and he couldn’t help but smile at that because despite his protests he was happy to use his powers to help them out. And if it also stroked his ego to show off his fanciful magic tricks, so be it.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and started to chant.

“ _Corpus Levitus!_ ” The coffin wobbled slightly. _“Diablo Dominus!_ ” The room began to shudder. _“Mondo Vicium!_ ”

A loud whinny boomed through the Shack, bringing the three of them to their knees, and then everything went silent. Dipper cautiously opened his eyes, and watched the lid of the coffin slide off like butter. A shivering hoof poked out from within, and then another, and then two more. There was an awful groaning noise and then the entire coffin flipped over. Another whinny shook the room, disintegrating the coffin in the process, and there she stood. Gallops, in the flesh.

Most of it, anyway. Gallops definitely did not look “as good as new”. Her fur was a bit greener, she was missing skin in a few places, and she looked gaunt like she had suffered some muscle atrophy in the time since ingesting Mabel Juice. Dipper cringed at the monstrosity he’d wrought and braced himself for cries of disgust from his sister and great uncle.

But the screaming never came. Instead the demon heard something like… snickering?

“Wow, Dipper,” Mabel said, and he could feel without seeing the shit-eating grin on her face.. “Don’t you think you’re… zombie’ting a dead horse?”

He swiveled around, mouth flapping open and shut like a fish, and saw Mabel and Grunkle Stan barely holding in laughter.

“Good job turning Mabel’s horse undead, kid, but you’re gonna have to brain that thing in,” Stan choked out. “Get it? Brain? Like rein? Cause it’s a horse? I’m funny!”

Before Dipper could get a word out, there was a loud _crunch_ , and he looked up to see Gallops taking a massive bite out of his hat again. The appalled look on his face was enough to send both Mabel and Stan howling to the floor with laughter.

"It's not funny, guys!"

With exertion, Mabel wiped a tear from her eye and wheezed at him. " _Dipper-you're-a-demon-with-a-zombie-horse-it's-the-funniest-thing-i've-ever-_ "

He narrowed his eyes as she succumbed to her glee again, and turned his gaze back to the horse. "It's not funny, right?"

Gallops winked at him.

Dipper turned white as a sheet and tessered to a far-away part of the Mindscape. He needed a minute to reflect on the horror he'd wrought.

(When he returned to the Shack a couple of days later, half of the house was covered in hay, half of the house was covered in brains, and Mabel had left him a gift on his bed: an orange sweater emblazoned with the words "CULT OF THE NECROPRANCER".)

**Author's Note:**

> Tfw you write over a thousand words just to set up a pun
> 
> (inspired by [this tumblr post](https://normal-horoscopes.tumblr.com/post/619391949103890432/tagline-you-cant-beat-this-dead-horse))


End file.
